Professor loses student data

A flash drive holding information on about 8,000 current and former Texas A&amp;M University-Corpus Christi students was lost by a mathematics professor while on vacation in Madagascar, university officials said Friday.

The flash drive -- a thumb-sized memory data storage device -- may have contained Social Security numbers and other identifying information for students of all classifications and majors enrolled during the spring, summer and fall of 2006, said Marshall Collins, assistant vice president for marketing and communications at the university.

Department of Mathematics Chairman Blair Sterba-Boatwright took the flash drive with him on a two-week vacation and discovered it was missing as he was packing to go home, Collins said.

"He panicked when he got back to the United States," Collins said. Sterba-Boatwright was using the information for a statistical study, and it wasn't immediately clear why he took the records with him on vacation or if a violation of university policy occurred, Collins said.

A phone message left at Sterba-Boatwright's home Friday evening was not returned.

Sterba-Boatwright returned to the United States during the weekend and told university officials shortly after arriving back in the country that he noticed the flash drive was missing, Collins said. University officials waited until Friday to notify via e-mail students whose information may have been compromised because it wasn't immediately clear what may have been on the flash drive, he said.

"That is what took a while -- when someone says I cannot find a flash drive and I believe those files were on it, we had to re-create what they could be," Collins said. "We can only go by what he's telling us."

A university investigation is pending and likely will begin early next week led by Interim Provost Robert O. Kirby, Collins said. Sterba-Boatwright already has been interviewed by university information technology officials to determine the scope of information that potentially was on the drive.

University President Flavius Killebrew and Kirby were out of town Friday, Collins said. Neither could be reached for comment.

Early next week, letters will be mailed to students potentially affected and information will be posted on the university Web site explaining what to do if students suspect they are the victim of identity theft, Collins said.

The university hasn't received any information that any students' identities have been stolen, Collins said.

Corpus Christi Police Department Cmdr. Brian Uhler said that if a person suspects they are a victim of fraud, they should check their credit report and credit card and other financial statements looking for suspicious activity.

"Signs of identity theft could be accounts they didn't open and debts they can't explain," he said. "If a person is denied credit or finds out that their credit rating is not as good as it should be for some unknown reason, that might also be an indication."

Another thing to consider doing is placing a fraud alert to each of the three major credit bureaus, which entitles a person to a free credit report from the three companies, Uhler said.

Signs of identity theft could show up nearly instantaneously when information is lost or stolen, or could take more than a year to show up, Uhler said. It's also important for a person contesting fraudulent charges on a credit statement to report the charges immediately, he said.

Contact David Kassabian at 886-3778 or kassabiand@caller.com

Filing a fraud alert

Placing a fraud alert with one of the three major credit bureaus stays on a credit record for at least 90 days and entitles the filer a free credit report. For information visit or call: